"Twelfth Night"

Happy 448th birthday, William Shakespeare! To celebrate it, there were madrigals - my photograph shows them being sung by Shakespeare's (decorated) bust at the foot of the RST main stairs, but elsewhere too.

Other Stratford merriment included sonnets on the chain ferry: we crossed over on it, having tickets for Twelfth Night in the main theatre this afternoon. As last week, with The Tempest, David Farr directed, and Jonathan Slinger, Emily Taaffe and Kirsty Bushell led a strong cast.

Row G in the Stalls suited me fine, with a gangway in front for me to stretch out my legs: it's worth the premium you pay to have this degree of comfort, the first time I've experienced it. At one point - from the plume of smoke Caroline pointed out to me, emerging from behind the stage - it looked as if the theatre was about to catch fire; so it's also handy being able to dash for the exit when necessary. (It wasn't.)

I enjoyed, but without going overboard, both performances and production. Just one belly laugh I counted, and the very act of keeping count is an indication of some reserve.

Could it be my favourite Shakespeare play? If so, it's because it was the very first I saw, when that I was and a little tiny boy. Well, an impressionable 12-year-old anyway, whose parents took him, in 1955, to Gielgud's production, also at Stratford: a lisping Olivier ("Thome are born great...") played Malvolio, and his then wife, Viola. In the interval, my mother and I walked to the East end of what was then the narrow riverside balcony, and watched Vivien Leigh standing at her dressing-room French window.

Fast forward nine years, and I saw the play again, this time at the Oxford Playhouse - in Michael Rudman's OUDS production, with Michael York as Orsino: the cast included Oliver Ford Davies, David Aukin (Malvolio) and Annabel Leventon (a well-upholstered Viola). Other memorable Malvolio/Viola couplings were Donald Sinden/Judi Dench (1969) and Nicol Williamson/Jane Lapotaire (1974). The list is incomplete, as are my records, alas.

But no previous Aguecheek, not Michael Denison, nor Michael Elwyn, nor David Warner, nor even my hero Ian Richardson, matches - to my mind - the splendid Bruce MacKinnon in the present production.

"The Tempest"

"I have bedimm'd the noontide sun..." says Jonathan Slinger's Prospero, as we sit ensconced inside the Royal Shakespeare Theatre through a fine, bright Saturday afternoon watching The Tempest.

As we've found before in Stratford's revamped main house, some of those magic words were lost to us this time also: we were in the extreme left corner of the Circle (as you look at the stage) - this may have had something to do with it, or are we just getting older and deafer? Slinger's admirably wide-ranging voice seemed to drop almost to a whisper at times. He has little of John Wood's presence, but the virtual twinning of Prospero and Ariel - Father and Holy Spirit - was inspired.

The Dramatis Personae listing Sebastian as King Alonso's brother makes it feel wilful at first to cast a high-heeled, curvaceous Kirsty Bushell in the part. But this is all part and parcel of a brilliant production by David Farr: a highly poetic and mysterious play is given to us full of real theatre - indeed, this Tempest is one of the best RSC renderings we have caught in recent years.